Opinion: Welcoming the Syrian Refugees

By Andrew McKeever

Very soon, 100 refugees from war-torn Syria will be arriving in Vermont. Eventually the U.S. expects to welcome about 10,000 similar refugees from that sad and tragic country, although many , many more, probably numbering in the millions, are stranded in refugee camps in the Middle East, or in parts of Europe. They are part of a gigantic migration of people on the move, displaced from their home countries by war, food shortages, environmental distress or repressive, authoritarian governments.

Syria had been a relative island of stability in the highly unstable Middle East, even though that stability came at the price of an authoritarian dictatorship led by the current president, Bashir Assad, and before him, his father, Hafez Assad. Before the uprising that began in 2011 against this repressive regime, part of the wider “Arab Spring” movement which saw other leaders  toppled in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. In Syria, as we all well know by now, an uprising of regime opponents, who have from time to time had difficulty coordinating together and include some elements the U.S. government feared had ties to terrorist groups, has failed to dislodge the Assad regime. Large swaths of Syria were taken under the control of the insurgents, including Aleppo, the country’s largest city, which has been much in the news lately, and where the government forces, backed to the hilt by their Russian allies, along with more help from Iran, seem poised to recapture the entire city. The pro-government forces seem to have the upper hand now, and the long running insurrection, which has claimed nearly half a million lives and displaced millions more, may be on its last legs.

That doesn’t mean all those millions of refugees who’ve been living in camps in Jordan or Turkey or Greece can now safely return home. If they aren’t concerned for their safety or of being branded as politically suspect, they would returning to shattered communities where the price of victory is a destroyed and completely broken economy and way of life. It’s not even clear how Syria holds together as the nation it used to be, since the ongoing presence of terror groups like ISIS, as well as the interest of the Kurdish people, our allies in this complex, multi-tiered war that involves neighboring lands such as Turkey and Iraq, make the prospects for genuine peace problematic at best.

Over here, in the U.S., we have a duty, a responsibility and an obligation to help these folks, who for no fault of their own, find their lives upended and their dreams of a better life put on long term hold.

Virtually all of us, with the exception of Native Americans, came here from somewhere else. Some immigrants were treated warmly, and others, at the time of their arrival, were not. Today, some of us are fearful that by welcoming refugees from Syria, we are importing would-be terrorists into our midst, a fear sadly stoked by some misguided and overheated rhetoric by our new president-elect, Donald Trump. Given the extreme vetting these 100 Syrian refugees have undergone, along with the 10,000 others we plan to admit — a shamefully small number that doesn’t even rank as a drop in the bucket — the likelihood of that is so small as to be impossible to measure. Highly unlikely is one way to put it.

These people are folks who back in their home country were hard-working regular people who want the same things we do — a fair shot at a decent life and a better one for their kids. They are play-by-the-rules, probably entrepreneurial, often professional, well-educated people who will be an asset —  people willing to do jobs that are going begging at the moment, eager to join the community and make their contribution to the greater good, just like generations of immigrants have done before them. This is a net gain for Rutland and all of Vermont. This is how our society grows, by welcoming new people, with fresh blood and their own traditions, who in coming years will make outsized contributions to our state and country.

In Vermont in recent years we’ve heard a lot about an aging and declining population. This is one way to reverse that, although let’s not kid ourselves and think that 100 people will make that much difference. And yes, not every town has the capacity to accept dozens or hundreds of refugees. Rutland does. So has Winooski and Burlington. There are no shortage of other towns, places like Springfield, White River Junction, Barre and St. Johnsbury, once flourishing communities that no longer have the industries that used to propel their economies. And we could add Manchester and Bennington County to that list as well. Housing may not be as plentiful here as it presently is in Rutland, but we could use the fresh blood here too. The entire state needs more people to help grow the economy, and these folks are one way to do that, making for a clear win-win — we help them get back on their feet, extending a helping hand to those in such dire need, and in time, they will pay that back with interest many times over, bringing diversity to our state as well as their hard work.

The tragedy that led to these folks arriving on our shores may have decades more to play out, but we can do our share, for the best of humanitarian reasons, to help those in their hour of need, just as we would hope and want to be helped if things were the other way around. This entire situation should be a useful reminder to us to be grateful — for what we have, and what we can share.